


Retrograde

by ninthlife



Category: Star Trek
Genre: Alternate Universe - Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Fusion, M/M, Touch Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-20
Updated: 2017-06-20
Packaged: 2018-11-16 13:51:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11254257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninthlife/pseuds/ninthlife
Summary: After the five year mission, Kirk erases Spock.





	Retrograde

There is one other man seated at the back of the train.

Kirk doesn’t know what’s possessing him to go back to Riverside. He woke up feeling adrift. Maybe that’s all it is.

The man’s wearing a beanie pulled low over his ears and a heavy pea coat with the collar pulled up around his neck. He’s got his nose buried in something, a journal of some sort. Kirk leans out into the aisle to get his attention, holding out his hand.

“Hi,” he says.

The man ignores him.

Kirk turns back around.

He feels restless. It’s a long trip. But maybe the man doesn’t want to be bothered.

Kirk gets up, walks to the back of the train, and takes the seat in front of the man in the beanie.

“Hi,” he says again. He holds out his hand. The stranger stares at it.

“Hello,” he says.

“I’m Jim.” The stranger doesn’t answer. He curls back over, using his body to shield whatever it is he’s writing. Kirk pulls his hand back into his chest, hurt, and cranes his neck to see if he can get a glimpse at the journal. “You’re not going to tell me your name?”

“I do not see the necessity.”

“It’s friendly! I told you mine.”

“Indeed.”

“Is it funny? I promise I won’t laugh. My middle name’s ‘Tiberius.’ James Tiberius Kirk. _That’s_ funny.”

Though the stranger’s about as anxious a man as Kirk has ever seen, his shoulders tense further at the sound of Jim’s name. He closes his journal. He looks up again. He’s a severe looking fellow, with sharp eyebrows and soft eyes. Jim thinks that maybe it’s enough he’s got his attention.

“Can I borrow your hat?”

“No—” The stranger starts, far too slow for Jim. Kirk snatches it, beaming, ready to slam it onto his own head when he sees—

“I’ll be,” says Jim. “You’re a Vulcan?”

The man’s face is far from expressive, but his eyebrows raise in a slight way that makes Jim think he may have caught him by surprise. “Humans are not generally familiar with our species.”

“Specially not a hick Iowan like me, right? Look at this.” And without knowing how, Jim separates his index and middle fingers from his ring and pinky, holding the Vulcan salute over the train seat. Then, he tosses the hat back. “This why you didn’t want to shake hands?”

The stranger’s more startled than a deer at a shooting range. “I am Spock,” he says.

Jim smiles. “See? That didn’t hurt much, did it?”

Spock blinks at him. “It did not hurt at all.”

“That’s my _point,_ Spock,” Jim says, and he hoists himself up in his seat so he can give Spock a firm shove to his shoulder.

Spock is not thrilled about this. He places his hand against where he’s been touched and he cocks his head to the side when he looks at him, eyes narrow, mouth thin. “That hurt a marginal amount.”

Kirk laughs, which catches Spock off guard. His mouth pinches in, his eyebrows go up—and Kirk laughs even more.

“Humans smile too much,” Spock says.

Kirk lowers his face below the train seat so that only his eyes are visible. He’s still beaming, but he hopes Spock will appreciating his hiding the offensive gesture. “Maybe Vulcans don’t smile enough.”

“Showing one’s teeth is a display of weakness and vulnerability in most mammals.”

“I’ll bet you’ve got a fine smile, Spock.”

“Those are...” Spock hesitates, choosing his words, “poor odds.”

“I like it when the odds are against me,” says Kirk, turning back around. “Always makes everything more interesting.”

“That is illogical,” says Spock.

Kirk smiles. He says over his shoulder, “almost everything is.”

*

Bones had refused to show him. Kirk had to ransack the office to find it, folded, innocuous, at the bottom of Bones’ garbage bin.

                _Dear Mr. Leonard McCoy:_

Your acquaintance, _S’chn T’gai Spock,_ has had _James T. Kirk_ from his memory. Please never mention this relationship to him ever again.

Thank you.

                —This notification is to be received on completion of the Lacunan process and destroyed immediately.

“You weren’t going to tell me?”

“Jim—”

As they speak, the titles on the covers of Bones’ books fade away. Kirk gestures with the tiny index card. “What is this? What is this ‘Lacunan process,’ I want—”

 _“Jim,_ reacting like this is why I’m not supposed to tell you—”

There’s a crackling in the room, like burning, and Jim is starting to see holes in his hands. Spock’s name disappears from the index card. “Like ‘this?!’ Like ‘this?!’ You’re telling me that my first officer has had me—has had me—”

“I’m _not_ telling you, you’re _not supposed to know—”_ The papers on McCoy’s desk grow blank.

“Why not! It concerns me, doesn’t it? I don’t know what kind of—”

Sounds of the street begin flowing in from the hall. “Dammit, Jim, I know it’s unfeeling of the little hobogoblin, but what did you—”

“This isn’t Spock.”

“Jim—”

“I need to see him.”

“It’s over Jim, he can’t—”

“I need to see him!”

And when he bursts out of Bones’ office he finds himself standing at the back of a lecture hall, looking down from the top row while Spock gives a calm, pointed speech about... God, does he even remember? The sounds coming from his mouth are peach fuzz, radio static. Jim had sat in the back in plainclothes and just stared at him, waiting for Spock to notice. He hadn’t. Hundreds of students sit scribbling notes, and, like he’s in a dream, Kirk gets up and begins to walk down the steps. As he descends, the classroom disappears behind him, dissipating in his wake like smoke, the students and their notes forgotten.

“Spock?” Kirk says, stepping right up to him. Spock looks straight through him, continuing his dispassionate monologue. It’s like he can’t see him at all.

Behind them, the notes on the blackboard become blurred and disappear.

They stand across from each other in Spock’s office, Spock’s desk between them.

“How could you do this to me?” Kirk asks, voice breaking, and this time, Spock notices him.

“I do not understand the question.”

“You remember me, Spock. You remember me, don’t you?”

“I do not recall making your acquaintance.”

Pieces of the ceiling begin falling through the room like rain.

“Of course you do, Spock, you’re my First Officer. We’re—I was your Captain. On the Enterprise—” And Jim is trying to shuffle around Spock’s desk but Spock evades him, and even now, when Jim grabs at his coat he feels like his fingers go straight through the fabric. “What did you do to us you stupid—you stubborn—”

“Sir, your presence in my office—”

 

“Touch me,” Jim says, frantic now, holding out his hands, pulling his sleeves up. “Spock? Spock, touch me.” Spock keeps his hands folded neatly behind his back. He looks at Jim like he’s something quizzical, a science experiment gone wrong. “You can’t not remember. Come on, I know you, you wouldn’t do this. You need to remember. Let me help you. Touch me. _Spock.”_

But he was not the same man Jim once knew.

Jim falls to his knees. The whole room feels hot and tight, like it’s trying to hurt him. The light through the window flickers and decays. He can feel his face growing red and pressure throbbing behind his eyes but he doesn’t care, Spock couldn’t have done this to him, he couldn’t have—

“Spock...”

Security escorts him from the premises.

Behind him, the academic buildings of Starfleet Academy crumble into dust. The students staring at the once great Captain Kirk lose their faces, then everything else.

“I’m doing it to you!” Jim screams at the buildings. “I’m doing it to you!”

*

The man from the train is still scribbling in his notebook at the other end of the diner. Jim asks his waitress if she can bring him a coffee. When she obliges, Jim watches with satisfaction as the skin around Spock’s mouth tightens, his eyebrows raise, and he looks around the restaurant.

Jim waves.

Then— _fuck it._ He gets up, crosses the diner, and joins Spock at his booth.

“Eating alone?” Jim asks. Spock slams his journal shut. “I can leave, if you like.”

“Your company is... not unwelcome,” says Spock, and Jim smiles. Pursing his lips, Kirk reaches across the table and places his index finger against the journal’s leather cover.  “Are you really so bad that I can’t see?”

Spock pulls his journal closer to him, then, thinking better, slides it across the table. Jim hesitates before opening it, waiting, and he thinks that’s right, because after a moment, Spock gives a solemn, terse nod, granting permission.

The first few pages are beautiful. Immaculate technical drawings of landscapes and foliage, of torn open beings with carefully labeled anatomies and speculations scribbled in Vulcan in the margins.

“Pages ripped out,” Jim says as he turns them, running his thumb across a thick chunk of jagged paper near the binding where half the journal has been torn away.

“It is disconcerting,” Spock begins. “I do not recall—” But Jim has come to what Spock has been trying to hide.

Pictures of him. “Hey!” His whole face lights up when he smiles, too often, and Spock _hates_ it. He can feel it in the stomach and at the base of his neck, he can feel it in the way his mouth starts smiling. “This is amazing! Looks just like me!” He holds the journal up next to his face for comparison. Spock has done two illustrations, one from behind, when Jim was seated further up on the train, and another, more detailed, this one of Jim’s face as seen from over the train seat. He reminds him of somebody.

Jim turns it back towards himself so he can admire it again, and glances up at Spock with a smirk, his eyes shining. Again, Spock feels it in his stomach. “And here I was, thinking you thought I was a pest.”

“The two are not mutually exclusive, James T. Kirk,” Spock says, and Jim laughs. Spock fights against smiling back, but his mouth is twitches, betraying him.

The waitress returns, and Jim orders an enormous breakfast: eggs and pancakes and hash browns and bacon. Spock asks for water. As she returns to the kitchen, dragging her feet, Jim reaches for Spock’s coffee and takes a sip. Spock stares at him.

“Water?” Jim says, holding the mug under his chin to warm his face. “Don’t like coffee?”

“Caffeine has a negligible reaction with Vulcan biology.”

“But it’s warm,” Kirk says. He places the mug down between them and reaches for Spock’s wrist, careful only to touch the fabric of his coat. Spock allows this, and allows Kirk to guide his hand to rest against the warm ceramic. Jim’s other hand cups the other side, his fingertips a hair’s breadth away from Spock’s palm. His cheeks, Jim noticed, have turned faintly green. “Isn’t it sweltering on that planet of yours? What brings you to Iowa in Winter?”

Spock draws away from the mug. “Earth is also my planet,” he says. “As for your second question—” and he hesitates, unwilling to admit it—“I do not know myself.”

“A Vulcan doing something impulsive?”

“Half-Vulcan,” Spock says, and then closes his eyes as though the fact disagrees with him.

“Must be lonely,” says Kirk, abandoning the mug, running his fingers along the marks with which Spock has defined his jawline. Spock’s eyes snap open. “Just mean that you’re stuck between two places, is all. Never home.”

“There are worse fates than loneliness,” says Spock.

“There are better ones, too,” says Jim.

*

Two sleeping pills, they’d said. Two sleeping pills and it’d be like waking up after a bad night. Two sleeping pills, and Spock, the Enterprise, their five year mission—gone.

“I can’t remember the Enterprise?”

“You will,” the nurse had said, the Vulcan who would be performing the process looming, ominous, in the corner. “Though the landscape of your memories are very closely intertwined. You will lose a great deal.”

“So what will I think I was doing?” asked Kirk. “Where will I think I’ve been?”

“Wherever you were,” said the Vulcan, infuriatingly calm. “You will find the brain adapts very easily to selective lost. Rather, you will not notice the loss at all.”

Through the door, Kirk watches himself strapped in a chair, listening to his Captain’s Log, women in white coats projecting old video on the wall, mapping his brain with computers—and suddenly, to his left, the receptionist leaning forward with a release form.

“Captain,” she says, “the Lacunar process is rarely performed on humans, even Spock, whose biology was only half compatible—”

He’s half a mess in a tattered t-shirt and he can’t stand hearing Spock’s name. He slams his fist against the counter, rattling the partition. “I want it _done!”_

In a flash of light, the receptionist loses her face, again, and reception disappears entirely.

“It’s happening now, isn’t it?” Jim says, rounding on the Vulcan. “It’s happening now!”

The Vulcan looks from Kirk to the other Kirk across the hall. The nurse has disappeared, though the women in white coats have quadrupled. “Yes,” says the Vulcan, “this is what it would look like.”

Kirk rushes him, inhibitions destroyed in the safety of the dream, and pins him against the wall. “Did you do this to Spock?” Kirk demands, “was it you?”

The lamp above them starts swinging, the medical facility in earthquake. The Vulcan says nothing. Jim shakes him, and all around him, the medical facility starts peeling away like paper. Kirk and the mind-mappers are long forgotten, dust, dust.

_In theory, it should just be a long, uncomfortable night with a Vulcan. You won’t remember in the morning._

_Kirk laughed. “Can’t pretend I haven’t had one of those before,” he said. She hadn’t laughed back, which Kirk thought was rude of her._

“Answer me you, you green-blooded—”

“You couldn’t trust my answer,” says the Vulcan, seeping translucent into the poster of Romulan anatomy he’s been pinned against. “I’m all in your head.”

The light goes out.

*

Jim hangs a spoon from his nose, no hands, and winks at Spock, pretending he doesn’t know that he’s endearing.

Spock struggles to pretend the same thing. Jim has coaxed him into removing his beanie and coat, and now he sits with his arms crossed in his black turtleneck, feeling vulnerable.

“I’ve got a proposition for you,” says Kirk, digging into his eggs. “We spend the day together.”

Spock says, “I would not find this disagreeable.”

“Coming from you,” Kirk says, “I’m starting to think that might be a compliment.”

*

_This was the last time you saw me:_

It has only been a month since they disembarked from the Enterprise.

 

 

*

 

“There’s got to be a way we can stop this.”

“That is highly illogical. The Vulcan—”

“Damn logic, man, you’re my First Science Officer! I want a solution!” The bridge is collapsing around him. Spock is leaned over the counsel again, lost to memory. “How could you do this to me?” Jim says, lost, broken. “How could you do this to me?”

Spock turns around.

“Captain—”

*

*

*

 

“This is why the Lacunar process is not performed on non-Vulans!” says the Vulcan from the medical center. “Humans are all the same! You are weak! Unstable!”

“Can’t you hear me? I want it to stop!”

“It’s too late to stop it,” says Spock, taking Kirk’s arm. “He can’t hear you. He only feels your pain, which is common.”

“You were just as bad,” says the Vulcan with the ghost of a sneer, dispassionately hateful. “You were worse!”

“You fought for me,” says Kirk.

“Of course I did,” says Spock.

An ocean washes over them.

*

*

“Meet me at Riverside,” Jim says, kissing him, brushing Spock’s bangs aside with his hands, pressing them cheek to cheek, entwining their bodies as much as he can. “I’ll show you the mountains, like I promised.”

Spock’s grip digs into his skin, vice-like, and bruises, but it doesn’t matter anymore. It’s going. It’s almost all gone. “As you wish, Captain,” Spock says. Then: “Jim...”

*

Kirk wakes up feeling adrift. It’s gray in San Francisco. He feels lost, like there’s a hole in him, but he thinks that this might be how he always feels. Maybe it’s just growing up. He always suspected age wouldn’t agree with him.

He thinks that maybe today he’ll go to Riverside. There’s an express train to Chicago, and it’s not a long trip from there.

*

 


End file.
